By Nicolas Breyton, Electrical Distribution & Power Products Strategist, Schneider Electric.
Today’s economy has the potential to become sustainable if companies thought of the world as an island in the middle of an ocean of inhospitable space.
This island – our Earth – provides us fresh air to breathe, freshwater to produce enough food, and provides an abundant amount of energy to distribute food and to build all the necessary materials around us.
This article was originally published in Enlit Europe’s Guide to season 3 – A just transition.
All resources on a large island can seem abundant, but they will eventually, become constrained.
Sustainability is systemic: either we all succeed together to create a sustainable business ecosystem, or we all will face shortages of critical resources.
We must decouple the production of all companies from the amount of energy consumed and the raw materials necessary to manufacture final products.
It is also about maximising business turnover by reselling the same repaired product many times. And ultimately, it is about designing modular and robust products that are easy to dismantle and repair, to enable a new profitable and high-quality second-life business.
